season 2, episode 7 previous episode | episode index | next episode this is a transcript of one episode of the samsung developers podcast, hosted by and produced by tony morelan. a listing of all podcast transcripts can be found here. host tony morelan senior developer evangelist, samsung developers instagram - twitter - linkedin guests eric cloninger, lead, developer relations team, samsung electronics chris shomo, infinity watchfaces listen download this episode topics covered sdc21, virtual conference history of the samsung developer conference conference audience keynote speakers conference announcements technical sessions expo floor galaxy store gallery code lab virtual reality after-hours party chris shomo, infinity watchfaces watch face studio 2020 best of galaxy store awards 2021 best of galaxy store awards bixby developers one ui beta samsung podcast platform smartthings helpful links sdc21, virtual conference - developer.samsung.com/sdc sdc18 highlights - youtube video sdc19 highlights - youtube video sdc19 replay - youtube video sdc21 preview - youtube video code lab - developer.samsung.com/codelab chris shomo, infinity watchfaces - youtube video watch face studio - developer.samsung.com/one-ui-watch 2020 best of galaxy store awards - youtube video 2021 best of galaxy store awards preview - youtube video bixby developers - bixbydevelopers.com/ one ui beta - developer.samsung.com/one-ui-beta/index.html samsung podcast platform - samsungpodcasts.com/ smartthings - developer.samsung.com/smartthings samsung developers homepage - developer.samsung.com samsung developers newsletter - developer.samsung.com/newsletter samsung developers blog - developer.samsung.com/blog samsung developers news - developer.samsung.com/news samsung developers facebook - facebook.com/samsungdev samsung developers instagram - instagram.com/samsung_dev samsung developers twitter - twitter.com/samsung_dev samsung developers youtube - youtube.com/samsungdevelopers samsung developers linkedin - linkedin.com/company/samsungdevelopers eric cloninger linkedin - linkedin.com/in/ericcloninger/ chris shomo linkedin - linkedin.com/in/christopher-shomo tony morelan linkedin - linkedin.com/in/tony-morelan transcript note: transcripts are provided by an automated service and reviewed by the samsung developers web team. inaccuracies from the transcription process do occur, so please refer to the audio if you are in doubt about the transcript. tony morelan 00:01 hey, i'm tony morelan. and this is pow! the samsung developers podcast where we chat with innovators using samsung technologies, award winning app developers and designers, as well as insiders working on the latest samsung tools. welcome to season two, episode seven. today's show is a special episode of the pow! podcast. last year, we were not able to have our annual samsung developer conference because of the pandemic. but this year, we're back with sdc21, a virtual conference this coming october, i sat down with eric cloninger, who leads developer relations at samsung. not only do we talk about some of the highlights from our past developer conferences, but what you can look forward to at this year's sdc21. enjoy. hey, eric, welcome to the podcast. eric cloninger 00:51 hey, tony. glad to be here. tony morelan 00:53 so i couldn't be more excited about this special episode where we get to chat about not only the past samsung developer conferences, but our upcoming sdc21. eric cloninger 01:03 yeah, it's gonna be a lot of fun. it is different this year for certain. tony morelan 01:06 let me first start off by asking what exactly is the samsung developer conference, eric cloninger 01:11 samsung creates a lot of different platforms and sdks for developers to create for and integrate with. so sdc is one of the ways we promote our platforms, and educate developers on their capabilities. like many companies, we realized that developers add a lot of value to our products with their own creations. so sdc is our opportunity to share knowledge and hopefully build a connection to the people that are making our products better. tony morelan 01:36 yeah, and what's unique with sdc 21 is this year, it's actually going to be a virtual conference. now we know that it's because the current pandemic we're in, but it's, i think, an opportunity for samsung really to reach to a much bigger global audience that will be able to come in and attend our conference. eric cloninger 01:55 certainly, you know, in the years past, it's been a live event. and there would be quite a few people there -- several thousand. now with it being virtual, we have a much bigger audience and people can actually see the technical sessions as well as the keynote online. even though it's not in person, it is still something that where we can share knowledge, and people can give us feedback on what they like and don't. tony morelan 02:21 let's go back and talk a little bit about the history of sdc. i think it started back in 2013. is that correct? that's correct. eric cloninger 02:29 and i was there in 2014, talking about the gear watch. tony morelan 02:34 development. wow, that must have been pretty close to when we first launched the watch. eric cloninger 02:39 i think it was the first gear s was the product that that i was working on. and we were talking about development tools and how to write apps for those watches. tony morelan 02:49 since then, we've done seven sdcs that, you know, there was a year i think around 2015 that we skipped. and of course last year, we did have to hold off on doing an actual conference. past locations, primarily san francisco in the bay area. eric cloninger 03:06 it's been at moscone every year until 2019, when it moved to san jose. so it's always been in the bay area somewhere that people who attend tony morelan 03:15 tell me about, you know, what is what is the audience. eric cloninger 03:19 the audience is primarily developers. and the content is really focused on that group. a lot of samsung employees attend to give the technical talks and a lot to people come from all over the world to work in the booths. and on the show floor. in one sense. sdc is like a family reunion, we get a chance to meet the people that we've emailed with and been on web conferences for a long time. that's a chance to come together. but it's also the fruition of a year of hard work, you'll whether it's virtual or in person, we can use the opportunity to celebrate and to share what we've worked on with third party developer community. tony morelan 04:05 yeah, i know, my first sdc was 2018. that was in san francisco. i hit started at samsung just a few months earlier than that. so it was a great opportunity, really, for me to meet, not just some of these employees that had only been, you know, emailing with but a lot of the partners that we had a great report with sdc 19 eric cloninger 04:29 i think there was over 5000 close to 6000 people that it's been five to 6000 every year since that i've been here. yeah, so that's a fairly good-sized conference. tony morelan 04:37 so let's talk about some of the past keynotes and some of the big announcements that we've made. going back to 2017. i think we had stan lee, is that correct? eric cloninger 04:47 yeah, stan lee from marvel was one of the main speakers. that was pretty interesting. in 2018, we had a lot of people watching because that's the day that they announced the galaxy fold. wow. so the first time anybody saw it was on stage at sdc. and there were probably a half a million people watching live on either facebook live or youtube. tony morelan 05:13 i remember my takeaway from sdc18 was tim sweeney for fortnite. epic games? eric cloninger 05:18 absolutely. on stage with one of our vps who was holding your tiny sword and shield. you know, it just it added to the silliness, but also the fun was pretty, pretty fun. tony morelan 05:33 oh, definitely. now sdc 19. we had another very interesting person up on the stage talk a little bit about vitalik. eric cloninger 05:41 yeah, vitalik buterin is the co-founder of ethereum. and that year, we also had justin sun from tron. the blockchain community is very interesting. and it's definitely a new aspect for samsung is we had the blockchain wallet sdk that was coming out that year. and so we wanted to have people that could talk about their interactions with it. so vitalik and justin, were on stage in the spotlight session on day two. tony morelan 06:09 yeah, that was pretty exciting actually, to see him up on stage they're in live in person. so a big part of our conference are the technical sessions, it's a chance for the community really to learn about new and upcoming technologies. talk a bit about some of those sessions that we've had in the past. eric cloninger 06:27 so pretty much any of samsung's technical features sdks and services have sessions at sdc. so if you're interested in ai and voice activated services, you can go to multiple bixby sessions, if you're into the internet of things and how to integrate into samsung smartthings ecosystem, there will be information there. you know, as i mentioned previously, there's blockchain, there's the knox partnership for if you want to do secure computing, one ui if you're a designer, and all the new foldable phones and devices out there, there's a lot of content around how to handle app continuity and the flex mode, as well as the unique things about foldable design that you can learn about, as well as things like samsung health and how to design for themes. there's a wide range of technical sessions for pretty much anybody at any experience level. tony morelan 07:24 yeah, yeah, in my area of involvement with the developer conference has been around that design side. i mean, as you know, my background is in design, you know, when we are giving the sessions on theme, designing watchface designing that that's really where i get my involvement with. so a lot of fun for me to be at the conference. walking around the expo floor has been one of the most exciting things for me to be there because truthfully at these different conferences, you just don't know what you're going to see. and i remember walking in the room if it was sdc 18 or 19. but seeing this awesome car on the expo floor, the harmon car. eric cloninger 08:00 yeah, the great thing about the expo floor is where you, you get to do a lot of the kind of non-technical learning. it's a great place in a more relaxed atmosphere to meet and talk to people about what's going on. so the harmon car harman is a subsidiary of samsung, and they create high end audio equipment. so i'm sure you're familiar with brands like harman, kardon, or jbl, or infiniti, all very high-end brands. harman also creates infotainment systems and telematics solutions for automakers. and so what they would do for several years is they would bring a car onto the show floor and deck it out with a lot of the latest software and hardware, as well as the audio systems for the attendees to sit in the car and try it out. unfortunately, they wouldn't let us drive it around the show floor obviously. tony morelan 08:47 i will say i actually did ride the elevator with the person who drove the car from southern california up to northern california for the show. so i did get to ask a little bit about you know what it is like to get behind the wheel of that car and she said it was an absolute blast to drive it up five. eric cloninger 09:04 i'm sure they had to go the speed limit though. tony morelan 09:06 definitely. i know that smart things. back in 14, one of our first conferences they actually set up like what they call the connected home. eric cloninger 09:14 yeah, it was actually a full size when not full sizes about a 900 square foot, you know, a 30 by 30 area where they had different rooms and inside each of those rooms, they would have different ways that you could integrate different iot solutions into the smart home. tony morelan 09:32 now just to be clear, a 900 square foot home in san francisco actually is full size. so in 2018, we did something i was actually pretty excited about we created what we called a gallery of theme. so you know as you know, with the galaxy store, designers can publish their phone themes, but what we did is we took those designs and actually built like a museum gallery big, full size images of the different themes nicely framed, and people would walk around this gallery. and not only see this beautiful, much larger than life theme design. but this was a gallery where at the end of the conference, we actually raffled off the different pieces, eric cloninger 10:15 it really shows how we have a lot of incredibly creative people who are creating work for the galaxy store, and samsung galaxy devices. all of those things that were shown in that that gallery are available for anyone to download and purchase on the galaxy store. tony morelan 10:31 yeah, i know that that gallery really, really was a success in a lot of people really enjoyed seeing that worked in person. another area of the floor that i saw had a lot of activity was code lab, talking about what exactly is code lab at the at the conference. eric cloninger 10:46 code lab is an interactive learning experience, you don't have to actually be present at sdc. to be able to use it. samsung employees create guided learning modules, with examples and downloadable code snippets that you can use to learn anything from android development, watch face design, or theme by the time you've gone through everything. tony morelan 11:13 so if people want to learn more about code lab outside of the conference, where can they find that information, eric cloninger 11:18 you can find the code lab on the samsung developer portal at developer.samsung.com/codelab. tony morelan 11:26 so i think one of the most exciting things that i saw happen on the expo floor was the vr team, they set up this like photography studio that talk about that. eric cloninger 11:36 so in 2018, that team created what was called a volumetric camera setup. so it had cameras in a lot of different positions in 360 degrees. so they would take a very detailed scan of your body, and then they would print it out on a 3d printer. and so that was really cool. and then the following year, that same team took that that same type of technology, and they integrated it with a live interactive experience called delusion. and delusion was a very creepy, interactive experience where you interacted with all of these crazy characters. and because of the time of the year, it was october 29, and 30th. so it's just the day before halloween, okay, you had all of these various characters that you were interacting with in a 3d experience. and the thing that was cool about it was the second night, we had this, you know, after hours segment and those characters in the game that actually came to life, and you actually saw these people walking around that you had interacted with, in the interactive exhibit. tony morelan 12:49 yeah, i remember that being a very fun and freaky evening, i was i was working in one of the booths behind the scenes doors were closed. and as they were prepping for the opening of the of the doors, the fog machine was rolling, that people started rushing in. and then i saw those characters that had been in that interactive space, actually walking amongst the people. and there were a few times that in a fun way, those a little not at ease with them with those different folks. eric cloninger 13:23 yeah, it was kind of a creepy experience. because some of those characters, i mean, they stayed in character, and they got to look right through you. and it just it was very creepy experience. so the after-hours is a lot of fun at you at sdc. as it is, with a lot of events, it's an it's an opportunity to kind of be a lot more relaxed. you'll see some people that you saw in the, the technical sessions earlier in the day, and you have a chance to maybe drill down a little deeper while you have, you know, a plate of food and beverage in your hand. so it's a good experience overall. and you know, to be honest, i'm looking forward to when we can do that again. tony morelan 14:02 yeah, yeah, hopefully, hopefully that will be next year. so i thought it would be nice if we brought in a designer slash developer who has been very involved with the samson community and who has not only attended and many of the past sdc conferences, but was also invited to speak at one of the past sessions. chris shomo, from infinity watchfaces eric cloninger 14:20 hey, chris, welcome to the show. chris shomo 14:23 hey, thank you for having me on here. tony morelan 14:25 yeah, no, it's great. it's great to have you on the podcast. so looking back at the samsung developer program, chris has been one of those resources that we've turned to many times and it simply comes down to not only your success, but your willingness to share and, and really help grow the entire ecosystem for samsung watchfaces and galaxy devices. chris shomo 14:43 well, one thing that i've learned is all about the community. that's one of the reasons i love to share things that i find out because i've also reached out to other designers and ask them, you know, hey, how do you do this? how do you do that? and they're more than willing to share back. so it really is a given. take type of thing and you know, if you're nice, then you can find some answers that you're looking for out there. tony morelan 15:04 there you go. definitely. and you know, honestly, the more success there is amongst all the designers just the more vibrant the galaxy store is just with, with lots of great content. chris shomo 15:13 oh, yeah. and just how it developed over time, too, because, like i've seen it, since the very beginning, when there was hardly anything on there and then just watching it explode to all these designs that you can't even imagine what's going to pop on there next. it's exactly designed to blow me away all the time. tony morelan 15:29 so chris is the person behind infinity watch faces, and truly is one of the first designers who started creating for the platform. tell me what year was it that you actually started designing and selling on galaxy store? chris shomo 15:39 oh, goodness. 2016. tony morelan 15:41 wow. yeah. so i actually did an episode on the podcast on chris last year, it was great episode, we talked about how you got your start creating for samsung and, and also that your house in savannah, georgia was featured in an episode of ghost hunters that it is haunted? chris shomo 15:56 yes, it is. it's been quite an experience, even though i do believe that the ghost does appreciate me being here, i believe. i do not know that. but she's been pretty nice. tony morelan 16:08 guys nice. so if you want to learn much more about chris, go back to that episode and check it out. it was it was a great show. so in 2017, before i started working with samsung, you were actually invited to come out to san francisco and speak at the conference. tell me about that. chris shomo 16:22 wow, it was quite an experience. and first off, it was my first developers conference, first type of any type of tech conference. so i was a little nervous in the very beginning. because here i am, i'm going to san francisco, and i'm getting ready to speak in front of a lot of other designers and developers. what an experience. it was great. tony morelan 16:43 i'm sure it was nice to actually meet also the people, you know, not only at samsung, but then you know, some of the fellow developers that are part of this community. chris shomo 16:51 yeah, and also met a lot of people that became future designers of for specifically watch faces, which was wonderful. they always come back to me and be like, hey, i was there. and i'm like, i remember you. and you know, and they take off and they do very well. yeah. tony morelan 17:06 so i actually came across a video on youtube of you speaking at the conference. and that's how i actually got my start how i first discovered that, you know, you can create these watch faces and, and start selling them for samsung. now, i took it a step further and actually started working for samsung eventually. chris shomo 17:23 yep. and i think that's amazing. i remember you sent me an email one time actually telling me that i had a typo on my website. that's right. and i was like, whoa, thank you, because it was just, uh, you know, no one wants a stupid typo on their website. so i got that fixed. and, and then i never knew that, you know, i'd be working with yeah, back and forth, like we are now and stuff. so it's great. it's amazing how everything is connected. tony morelan 17:49 yeah. so earlier this year, we announced a partnership with google and warehouse and introduced watch face studio to new tool for designing galaxy watch faces that are sold on the google play store. when the tool was first developed, we asked you to be part of that early access team. so can you tell me about that experience, how it is working with that tool, and what it's like to now publish on google play? chris shomo 18:10 well, first off, thank you for getting me in there. and you recommended me for being part of that team. and it was excellent to be part of it, because i was able to kind of push it to its limits for animations. i had a really long animation, i was testing with it. and i was sending it back and forth with samsung. and it helped them iron out and smooth out how the animations were working on the watch. and that was great. and, you know, of course, there's going to be a little bit of growing pains in the very beginning. we're working on that. but it's been amazing how the team at samsung has been so responsive. and to get the software right for us. you can really create some masterpieces. so i'm excited about this. tony morelan 18:55 yeah, and that's why i thought it was so important to have you part of that team is because really your designs are not like the typical design. i mean, you really do push the software to try and get the most out of it. you know, they're there's fun, they're quirky, i mean animations are a huge part of your designs. so is there anything new and exciting that we can anticipate coming out in the in the near future? chris shomo 19:15 oh, wow. i don't really know myself because i kind of jumped around so much with these designs, which is another reason why. yeah, i guess it's kind of unexpected and surprising when another one comes out. at one time you'll have like dancing tigers in the next second. you have dolphins and sea turtle swimming. i'm working on getting one onto the google play store right now called flip out that has the dolphins and the sea turtles and then tiger time as well. and then we got a giant eyeball for halloween that she's showing up. so yeah, a bunch of different things. tony morelan 19:48 you've got it in there. they're super crazy. they're very artistic. chris shomo 19:51 thank you. yeah, and it also one of the things that i like to concentrate on is trying to bring joy to people with the watch face. is where they look at it and you know, just for a moment of time, they can actually, you know, take a break from reality, they get absorbed into the watch smile for a minute. if that happens, and i know it's exceeded tony morelan 20:13 it also what i love is how you build in this sort of like goals where the watch will change, like, lets you step into an example, as you're reaching your different step goals throughout the day, your watch face then is also changing throughout the day. chris shomo 20:27 and that started out of course, with the ties and watches and it worked with every one step goal percentage that they set with the watch. and that was another thing that i'm glad i was in the beta because i was really expressing how much we needed a step goal percentage and to work with it, and they added it in after i requested it. and it was really quick. and of course there are some differences where we have to set the watch pace to its unique step goal as opposed to the user set step go but that's because of that they're trying to make it so it's compatible with all the different watches and where it was. but that's cool, it opens up a new line of challenge faces where you can reach 1000 steps for this to happen 2000 steps for this to happen and i think it's really going to open the door for a lot of unique and creative designs tony morelan 21:17 you know, you brought up a great point that i always stress and that is how approachable samsung is to our developer community. samsung really does listen to our developers and we actually want to have that one on one communications you know, through our different channels, it is really easy to reach out to us and we'll give you that that personal attention that we know our developers need when they're creating for samsung. chris shomo 21:39 and i've really watched the developers program grow over time too because back in 2016 you know it was kind of a shot in the dark but everybody was like new to it. samsung was new to this the watch faces and working with this well ready to be flooded of designers that are getting ready to come in. and then every one of samsung embraced us. we feel like we're part of a family. tony morelan 22:02 thanks. thanks, chris. i got to thank you for jumping in and joining us on the podcast when sdc is back in person. i hope to see you there, if not sooner, i will definitely be there. chris shomo 22:10 count me in. tony morelan 22:12 awesome. thanks, chris. thanks. eric cloninger 22:15 it was great to hear from chris. he's a part of the community of designers and developers that really make the galaxy store special. tony morelan 22:22 yeah, he's been there from pretty much day one. so it was great to catch up with chris. and like i said, i can't wait to actually see him in person. so it past sdcs, we've done what's called the best of galaxy store awards, i think, sec. 18 was the first time that we did the show at the conference. sec 19. that's when i actually hosted it down in san jose, it was great. we have a lot of the winners actually, at the conference, we're able to recognize them for the great apps that they've created for galaxy store. however, last year in 2020, because we did not have a conference, we did a virtual award show. this was presented on youtube as a life premiere. and it really actually was a lot of fun because we were able to reach out to a quite a big audience. eric cloninger 23:09 one of the things i thought was cool about that once we all said in the chat room, it was in the early evening us time, but there were people logging in from russia and the czech republic and slovenia. all of these developers and designers who had created things in one go is the middle of their night, but they were on there congratulating each other. tony morelan 23:29 i think it really shows how the award show is really a global award show. i mean we've got winners from all around the world winners from large companies down to indie designers and developers and it really is a huge, huge community. eric cloninger 23:45 i think it shows how the galaxy store enables a lot of smaller operations, smaller individuals who may get lost in a larger organization that they can actually create something and monetize it and enjoy the success that they can have from their own work. tony morelan 24:03 yeah, no that's very true. that being said, though, there have been some pretty big names that we've recognized with awards. in the past we've given awards to tik tok, epic games fortnite, microsoft with their franchise forza, top golf, that was another one and then there's a great company butterfly affected that his license big brands like spongebob, hello kitty, and star trek, it was great to see them recognized for their work. eric cloninger 24:31 and also last year, for the first time, bixby developers had the opportunity to have their capsules judged. and in 2020 the winner was spotify. tony morelan 24:43 yeah, it was a lot of fun. i actually worked on many of the trailers that were shown in the award show. and spotify was one of the ones that i really, really enjoyed doing, not only the voiceover for but integrating the music and all the editing that was that was a lot of fun to work on that project and we look forward to that in 2021. eric cloninger 24:59 and so when is the award show this year. tony morelan 25:05 so the award show will be part of sdc. so that is on october 26. later on in the evening, though, we're going to be doing a premiere on youtube at 6pm. eastern, and we will be participating in a live chat. so we would love for, you know, not only the winners will be on participating in this live chat, but we would love just to have the community on there. so we can all get together as a chance to, you know, congratulate the winners, and really talk about all of the great apps that were recognized during the award show. eric cloninger 25:35 yeah, the one thing about this, that i think we did have a lot of fun with it last year, and we hope to have more fun this year. in that chat session, the invitation goes out to really everyone who is interested in the galaxy ecosystem. and that could be anybody who is a user or a consumer or a developer or a designer. you know, we want to we want to celebrate everyone's hard work. tony morelan 25:59 definitely, definitely. and if you would like to actually go back and see who the previous winners are, and actually learn more about this upcoming award show, you can go over to developer.samsung.com forward slash awards to learn more about the best of galaxy store award show. so let's talk about sdc 21. as you know, it's a virtual show that will be on october 26. where can people find out more information about registering to attend the virtual conference? eric cloninger 26:28 so the conference is free for anyone to attend, and you can learn more at developer.samsung.com slash sdc. tony morelan 26:38 let's talk about some of the sessions. what can you share about the sessions at sdc 21? eric cloninger 26:44 well, i don't want to steal any of the thunder from the product teams have been working so hard for the last year. but it will tell you that most every technology team that is working on products at samsung will have something to talk about at sdc. so if you're interested in the one ui beta, you'll learn a lot more about that at the sessions, the watchface tools, there's a podcasting platform that's brand new that i think you know something about, tony morelan 27:09 yeah, yeah, no, i am helping out the podcast platform team. we're excited. samsung has their new podcast platform, making it easy for users to listen to podcasts. and we're really excited because in october, we're going to be expanding this platform to countries in europe. so it's really a big deal. you can check out my session and i kind of walk you through how it is that you submit your podcast to samsung. so do you have any insight on what is going to be featured in the keynote, eric cloninger 27:38 i do have a little bit of information to share. and one of the things that is always kind of fun with the keynote at sdc is that samsung president dj koh will be speaking as well as many other people from within the design and engineering teams at samsung. as you know, the last physical sdc was in 2019, your seems like our world has kind of stopped. but to be honest, the pace of technology keeps on moving. and so nearly every samsung technology team will be there. and they want to talk about all the innovation creation that they've done in the last two years. so there'll be things announced for nearly every technology team from bixby and smartthings to mobile devices and smart tvs. there's lots of information for developers that they will be able to use to create their own products for 2022 and beyond. tony morelan 28:34 so really exciting. sdc 21 is going to be october 26. eric cloninger 28:39 and if you want to attend, all you have to do is register at developer.samsung.com/sdc. it's free to attend and we would love to see you there. tony morelan 28:51 excellent. hey, eric, thanks so much for being on the podcast. super exciting to be back at it with sdc and i can't i can't wait for it. eric cloninger 28:59 oh, absolutely. it's really, it's the result of a year's worth of work by hundreds of people. and we really want to share it with all the people out there. tony morelan 29:10 yeah, it should be a great show. right. thanks, eric. all right. eric cloninger 29:13 thank you, tony. closing 29:14 looking to start creating for samsung, download the latest tools to code your next app, or get software for designing apps without coding at all. sell your apps to the world on the samsung galaxy store. check out developer.samsung.com today and start your journey with samsung. tony morelan 29:30 the pow! podcast is brought to you by the samsung developer program produced by tony morelan.
